


patterns of love in peoples of diaspora

by decinq



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Spoilers for CA:TWS, Time Loop, ground hog day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-06
Updated: 2014-06-06
Packaged: 2018-02-03 15:11:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decinq/pseuds/decinq
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Impossible things happen all the time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	patterns of love in peoples of diaspora

Steve has never personally had an issue with accepting impossible things as improbable. And there have been, without doubt, situations and times when he has had to focus, to concentrate, to shift moments and ripples of time from impossible to possible in his mind.

 

And so, the Winter Soldier’s mask falls to the concrete. Until this point, Steve had never imagined this; but unimaginable, impossible things happen all the time, and then they’re just another part of reality.

 

“Bucky?”

 

 

 

 

 

“Whoever he is now, I don’t think he’s the kind of guy you save. He’s the kind you stop.”

 

And later, “You know, Cap, I can’t tell if you’re compromised or concentrated.”

Steve starts, “Listen, Sam—“

“I don’t know how it was, I don’t know how the two of you were. I’m just saying, from where I’m standing…Just be smart, got it?”

 

Steve's hands are curled into fists to stop them from shaking. What does it matter how they were? What does it matter when the only descriptor that counted until now had always been _dead_?

 

 

 

 

 

 

He lets go, lets himself fall back into the Potomac because, really, what other choice does he have? He hits the water, and it hurts. Everything goes quiet and still, and both very dark and very light at the same time.

 

 

 

 

 

His heart is beating faster than he can ever remember. It is bright and the sun is hot; he is standing in the D.C. heat, and the Winter Soldier’s mask is hitting the concrete.

 

“Bucky?” His voice sounds too soft, too rough, doesn’t even sound like it belongs to him. Steve can feel his mouth hanging open, his eyes squinting in the light.

 

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

 

It’s not that Steve doesn’t believe in second chances, but he does not know that he can hold much merit to third or fourth or fifth chances.

 

But he takes it.

In the end, it means nothing. The Winter Soldier still beats him half to death, still lets him fall from the hellicarrier into the murky water of the river below.

 

 

 

 

 

His vision comes back to him, and he is in a state of utter panic.

 

“Bucky?”

 

It leaves him in a desperate rush, and the Winter Soldier doesn’t have a chance to utter anything more than “Who—“ before Steve is rushing him, ignoring the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents that are surrounding them, before a bullet catches Steve in the right knee, before Rumlow has him in his sights and he sees the rifle aimed at his head, but in the end, feels nothing.

 

 

 

 

 

Steve sends Natasha and Sam to the third hellicarrier, the next time. But the two of them and Bucky are pronounced dead after the wreckage is searched.

He does not follow that plan through again.

 

 

 

 

 

Steve knows, deep in his bones, that he has to die eventually. Even with the seventy year freezer burn, he can feel himself getting older. His eyes have just a few wrinkles around them when he smiles. He knows that death is, of course, the conclusion to life.

 

But it ends poorly every time: he can’t keep the people he loves alive, he can’t get Bucky back, he can’t die. There is no escape; it’s not the losing that’s doing him in, really. Not anymore. It’s just the repetition. There is no solace in any moment.

 

The first time Bucky’s mask hit the concrete, Steve did not know what number of good things he had done to deserve it, but now— Every time he snaps back into himself, bright light obscuring parts of his vision, he thinks he must have done enough terrible things.

 

 

 

 

 

The next time, he gets in the back of the S.H.I.E.L.D. van, refuses to see Fury, goes home, showers until the water runs cold, and goes to sleep.

 

 

When he wakes up, a mask is falling from Bucky’s eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

There had been times, before, when Steve had wished he’d never agreed to the serum. In the days after Bucky fell, in the months after waking up in the staged hospital room, in the monotonous moments of existing in the twenty first century when everything seemed both too dull and too heady.

 

But this is not the same. This isn’t the kind of clearly defined regret that anyone normal would have. This, Steve thinks, is heaving and unfair. He has wanted Bucky back since the day he fell, since before he shipped out. He has wanted Bucky since he can remember. But Steve never wanted this, and decides that it is never safe to be nostalgic for something until it is certain that there is no chance of it coming back—because this, it’s not worth it.

 

 

 

 

 

He pulls a gun on himself too many times, but he considers it mercy, and no one else has succeeded in putting him out of his misery yet.

 

 

 

 

 

Hydra and Pierce have stolen Bucky’s voice. Steve knows this, but it still hurts every time.

 

“You’re my mission.”

 

 

And Steve thinks, time and time again, _finish it, finish it, finish it_.

 

 

 

 

 

He is tired. Despite the humidity in Washington, there is a chill that runs through him that is worse than any kind of cold he can remember.

 

 

 

 

 

His vision clears. It is the same as always.

 

Bucky’s voice comes out of Bucky’s mouth, but his eyes won’t meet Steve’s, and Steve collapses to the ground.

 

Steve just watches Bucky, just wants to soak up every fleeting image he can. There’s nothing for it, but this time, Bucky starts towards him, hands raised. Then the S.H.I.E.L.D. team is surrounding them both, pulling them away from each other—just like everything else in the world has done since 1942—and Steve hears Bucky’s voice ask, “Who is he,” distant and muffled, but softer than before, and Steve thinks, _oh_.

 

Sam says, “I don’t know how it was, I don’t know how the two of you were. I’m just saying, from where I’m standing—“

 

Steve says, “I loved him.” Natasha looks up, and he says, “I love him.”

 

And Sam—God bless him, Steve will never deserve Sam—says, “OK.” And it sounds just like how one would report the death of a traveling soldier or a traffic incident: tragic, certainly, but such things are to be expected.

 

 

 

 

 

Steve thinks that, had he known how he really felt, he would have told Bucky a long time ago. He supposes he had, with the little things. But Steve has always been gallant, and if he’d understood sooner, maybe he would have said something. He wishes, now, that he had.

 

There is a pain in his chest that feels the same way pneumonia used to feel, but Steve hasn’t been sick for the better part of a century.

 

 

 

 

 

“Don’t make me do this,” he says, but he fights despite himself.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s always the same.

 

 

 

 

 

Bucky gets caught under the rafter, Steve helps him out, Bucky beats him to a pulp. It varies, of course:

 

— “I’m sorry, Buck,” he says, and it burns like acid from his chest to his lips.

 

— Or; Steve’s lips pushed to Bucky’s, tasting of blood and time.

 

— Or; “You’re my mission,” followed by “I loved you without knowing it.”

 

 

 

 

 

He never turns a gun on Bucky. Steve doesn’t think it would work, but he doesn’t want to risk it. He has lived for years in a world without Bucky in it, and has found that world lacking entirely. The universe is a mighty stranger to Steve. The universe is cruel. How or why would he endure the magnitude of it, knowing he’d removed Bucky from it for nothing more than his perceived peace of mind?

 

 

 

 

 

“You’re my friend.”

 

“You’re my mission,”

 

_Finish it, finish it, finish it._

 

 

 

 

He hits the water. He hits the water. He hits the water.

 

 

 

 

 

“Then finish it,” Steve says, and something cracks open inside him, “Because I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.”

 

He falls. He hits the water.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s bright, florescent and wrong, and it hurts.

 

His breath leaves him just as he picks up Marvin Gaye in the background, cracks open an eye, wants to cry, but instead mumbles, “On your left.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> All mistakes are my own, concrit and praise always welcome. Title taken from Li-Young Lee's poem 'Immigrant Blues.'


End file.
